Wells Fargo is still on the prowl

The bank’s chief financial officer, Tim Sloan, told investors on Wednesday that Wells Fargo is “positioned to continue to grow through selective acquisitions.” And Europe, which is reeling from the effects of its sovereign debt crisis, is particularly attractive.

“What we are seeing is a really good opportunity to be able to purchase assets from European banks that need to increase their capital levels,” Sloan said at the Citi Financial Services Conference in New York on Wednesday. “We haven’t seen any reduction in the rate at which acquisition opportunities are recurring out there.”

Only last month, Wells Fargo snapped up the Houston-based energy-lending business of French bank BNP Paribas. While terms of the all-cash deal were not disclosed, the BNP energy business consists of nearly $9.5 billion of loan commitments and around $3.9 billion in loans outstanding. In 2011, Wells Fargo bought Burdale Capital, a London asset-based lending firm, from Bank of Ireland, and it also acquired $3.3 billion in U.S. commercial real-estate loans from Irish banks.

“We’ve got more than adequate capital,” Sloan said. “We’ve got a tremendous amount of liquidity and we’re good at acquisitions. We’re very disciplined. We also know that this part of the cycle is where you see good opportunities. Our competitors have different challenges. From our perspective, this is a great environment for us.”

The Wells Fargo finance chief also responded to a question about the challenges posed by the current environment of low interest rates, arguing that the bank doesn’t need to do anything differently.

“There’s no question that the lower interest rates that we have right now, along with slower economic growth along with some of the regulatory changes, have affected the industry pretty significantly,” Sloan said. “We need to execute the current model…We have a very diversified model.”

Sloan also highlighted opportunities in credit cards. “We see a real good opportunity to grow our credit-card business,” he said. “We’re going to continue to focus that business on the existing customer base.”

Shares of Wells Fargo, which bought Wachovia at the height of the financial crisis in 2008, have rallied 11% this year, putting its market capitalization at more than $161 billion.

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